Method for Calculating the Uncertainty range of Avoided Primary Energy Consumption and Environmental Impact applied to Data Analysis Software Services and Solar Electricity

The absolute and avoided primary energy consumption (PEC) of Software (SW) services is getting more attention. However, there is no commonly agreed bottom-up methodology for calculation of the total PEC of SW services. Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is a common denominator for most existing methodologies. The purpose is to test a new simplified methodology which includes the uncertainty and sensitivity. The new methodology is applied to two illustrative cases: data analysis SW and electricity production. The baseline results for data analysis SW show that the uncertainty will be quite high at around 30% and the most sensitive parameters are the production of electricity, the amount of data transfer and the production of the end-user device. Moreover - the data bytes transferred from the end-user device per iteration, the PEC per byte data transfer and the PEC of the production of the end-user device used to access the SW - contribute most to the total uncertainty. Regarding solar electricity replaced by a proportionate electricity mix, the avoided carbon emissions in China from 2021 to 2023 were 80±36 million tonnes. Intermediate suppliers to the solar electricity production systems can claim to have contributed to the avoided emissions according to their contribution ratio.